S9 screen turns black after accidental drop

One of the common reasons why a phone’s touchscreen fail is accidental drop or any form of physical damage. In this short troubleshooting post, we answer a common question posed by a lot of #GalaxyS9 owners — what to do if touchscreen is no longer working. We hope you’ll find this post helpful.

Before we proceed, we want to remind you that if you are looking for solutions to your own #Android issue, you can contact us by using the link provided at the bottom of this page. When describing your issue, please be as detailed as possible so we can easily pinpoint a relevant solution. If you can, kindly include the exact error messages you are getting to give us an idea where to start. If you have already tried some troubleshooting steps before emailing us, make sure to mention them so we can skip them in our answers.

Problem #1: Galaxy S9 screen turns black after accidental drop

Hello! I feel like I sifted through the forum fairly well, but perhaps we can attack my issue on a step by step basis to see if there’s any route I could take you might recommend. At first, my touchscreen didn’t work on my S9 after dropping my phone, but the screen showed up just fine. Now, the screen doesn’t show up either (completely black), but the sound works when I press the volume buttons up and down. I just tried holding the volume up, power button, and home button to factory reset but nothing appeared on the screen and now I can’t see my phone responding to anything (not sure if it’s just off in a way I can’t work with, or what). All help is appreciated! No idea what my phone version is so I just put Oreo. — Christian

Solution: Hi Christian. First off, we want to emphasize the fact that your phone has been physically damaged. To what extent we don’t know but most probably, the screen assembly is toast. Dropping a phone or any electronic device may result to hardware malfunction, failure, or both. It also can lead to immediate, clear problems, or, in some cases, to problems that need time to develop. Drops or unnecessary blunt force trauma can potentially break components or even the motherboard. Some devices may work fine after you drop them while others may immediately show serious hardware troubles.

Secondly, your phone must still be working since you can still hear it make a sound when pressing the volume rocker. This means the issue is most probably with the screen assembly only. The screen assembly has three major parts — digitizer, monitor/LCD, and digitizer flex cable. The monitor or LCD is the part of the screen that displays the images that you see. Think of it as the screen of your laptop where you watch photos, videos, etc. The digitizer is a thin layer of transparent sensor that registers your taps and touches so the operating syste can translate them into computer-readable commands. Even if the monitor is working (displays images correctly), that doesn’t mean the digitizer works as well. If you can still see the things you’re supposed to see on the screen but the phone is unresponsive when you tap it, that’s because the digitizer has stopped working. The signals from the digitizer are transmitted to the motherboard via the flex cable. These three components work together in order to allow you interact with your device. If one of them dies, you’re out of luck. What happened to your device after the drop was that the digitizer stopped entirely, making it appear that your phone has become unresponsive. Then, after some time, the monitor also gave up, causing the current black screen situation.

So, as a final note, you clearly have a hardware problem. The only angle of attack that you can try right now is repair. Contact Samsung and schedule a repair appointment. If you’re lucky and the damage is only limited to the screen assembly, you’ll only be paying for the screen replacement. Yes, you’ll have to pay for the screen replacement even if your phone is still under warranty. Customer misuse such as accidentally dropping your S9 is not covered by Samsung warranty.

My phone only turns on when its charging but if not it turns off and it also goes halfway from turning on.What happened was I dropped it a few times by waist height but after this one drop it still works but when i came back to use it stopped working like it won’t turn on.So then i went home thinking that its only dead but i didn’t know that my phone had a boot loop and another problem that it wont turn unless it’s charge.I got a bad temper that day.So,then i banged it on a carpet a few times but after researching about my phone.That’s when i realized it wont work and my phone .Also when i banged it on the carpet a few times it started boot looping on the start of my phone but after a few months.I came back and started fixing it but it kind of works.It just that It turns on for one minute and starts turning off again and its still a boot loop and it still wont change the fact that it wont turn on unless its charged.Please help me to fix my phone in any ways and if you could can you please tell me any ways that does not cost any money or something that is affordable. — Althea

Solution: Hi Althea. Like what we tell Christian above, the best thing that you can do right now is to get professional help, preferably from Samsung. Boot loop issue started to occur after the device was dropped and damaged so there might be an issue with its motherboard or battery or both. This may also be the main reason why your S9 refuses to stay on when it’s not connected to a charger. We’ve already seen a lot of same and similar cases in the past so we’re positive your problem can only be fixed by repair.

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